The Meeting del Mare CREA Foundation, in collaboration with the Ordinary Court of Naples and the Criminal Chamber of Naples, presents Justice and Beauty: dramaturgy of law in Baroque Painting, an event exhibition of 12 masterpieces of the Italian Baroque from private collections, open from 15 February to 15 March 2023 in the Piazza Coperta of the Centro Direzionale in Naples, which will transform the Palace of Justice in Naples into a museum.
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The inauguration of the exhibition is scheduled for Wednesday 15 February at 11:30 am at the Piazza Coperta of the Palace of Justice in Naples.
The President of the Court of Naples, Elisabetta Garzo, declares: “I imagine the unusual amazement, and perhaps the enthusiasm, of Magistrates, Lawyers, Clerks, Officials, Law Enforcement and parties of the most varied civil and criminal trials going to Court to be able to experience, in the confusion that daily animates the judicial offices, the wonder that inevitably generates, in the minds of human beings, the vision of prestigious paintings by great masters of the European Baroque depicting sacred and/or allegorical subjects, in which the theme of Justice in art is combined with the paradigm of Beauty. This opportunity was born from my friendship with Don Gianni Citro who, with deep dedication, animates the activities of the Fondazione Meeting del Mare – CREA, a flagship in the Italian panorama of organizations that propose Culture and Beauty as a way to improve the future of the human race”.
Don Gianni Citro, President of the Meeting del Mare CREA Foundation and curator of the event together with the magistrate Nicola Graziano, says: “Justice and Beauty seem to be the statements of an impossible paradigm, which demands the irruption of the ethical into the aesthetic and would even seek its conjugation or contagion, but the experiment of this exhibition, with all its intriguing organizational alchemies, makes clear the belonging and the inevitable understanding between the joy of vision and that of feeling. In the factual reality of this ambitious initiative, the ethical and the aesthetic, the good and the beautiful live in symbiosis and transmit eloquent harmony. Transporting 12 600th century canvases to the gloomy and busy habitat of a Palace of Justice is undoubtedly an operation outside the canons, beyond the difficult details of logistics. It is an uncomfortable and in some ways even counterproductive initiative. The Fondazione Meeting del Mare CREA is not new to bold and provocative undertakings. Art exhibitions in assets confiscated from organized crime, in shopping malls, in historical archives, have traced a path of recomposition between art and the spaces that host it, in order to generate amazement where expectations are weak and where the ground is apparently arid. Bursting into the environments of the administration of justice with the project of an exhibition of ancient paintings is a destabilizing action and leads to triggering a dense network of curious solicitations and sudden desires”.
“The purpose of the event exhibition “Justice and Beauty” – underlines the magistrate Graziano, curator of the exhibition – is to bring to the covered square of the Court of Naples the seed of a cultural revolution, to take root in the human soul, through the astonished gaze of those who, suddenly, see prestigious ancient paintings by great masters of the European Baroque appear. Twelve paintings, of rare beauty and intensity, which through key words, exemplify the spectrum of colors of Justice: Cruelty and Crime, Courage and Struggle, Deceit and Innocence, Hope and Judgement, Care and Vision, Peace and Beauty are a sort of subtitle of wonderful works that are also revealed in the daily attitude of the activity that takes place in the spaces of the Neapolitan Palace of Justice”.
“The choice to organize an exhibition of Baroque painting inside the Courthouse is, therefore, anything but casual: the body, the body in movement, is in fact the fulcrum of the Baroque, just as the body is the fulcrum of law and in particular of criminal law. The Baroque teaches us to recognize not only the dignity, but the beauty of our bodies. The bodies of prisoners, the bodies of the poor, the bodies of the “mad”, the bodies of the tortured, the bodies of refugees, the bodies of migrants. To respect the bodies of the last – and to give them justice – we must be able to see their beauty”, concludes the lawyer Marco Campora, President of the Criminal Chamber of Naples.
The painters on display are:
Carlo Sellitto (Naples, 1581 – Naples, 1614)
Filippo Vitale (Naples, 1585 – 1650)
Pietro Novelli (Monreale, 1603 – Palermo, 1647)
Agostino Beltrano (Naples, 1607 – Naples, 1665)
Giuseppe Piscopo (Naples, 1609 – Naples, 1656)
Simone Cantarini (Pesaro, 1612 – Verona, 1648)
Johann Carl Loth (Munich, 1632 – Venice, 1698)
Luca Giordano (Naples, 1634 – Naples, 1705)
Giovanni Battista Beinaschi (Fossano or Turin, 1636 – Naples, 1688)
Giuseppe Bonito (Castellammare di Stabia, 1707 – Naples, 1789)
Article published on 10 February 2023 - 09:48
